Customer Reviews

Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the American Mafia

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After reading "American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power" l looked forward to the author's second book on the history of the decline of the American Mafia and am happy to write that l thoroughly enjoyed it and in fact it is superior to his first book. Thomas Reppetto brings his substantial experience of law enforcement combined with his brilliant historical analysis of organized crime and is able to write a precise, informative and profound book. If you only read two books on the history of the American Mafia you cannot go wrong if you read these two books.

The book begins with the famous raid on a meeting of national mafia kingpins at Apalachin on a mild November day in 1957 led by Detective Sergeant Edgar Croswell of the New York State Police. The author debunks the theory it was a random raid by some hick country cops but a predetermined blow at organized crime by a polished and professional group of able and determined policeman. So this chapter sets the tone of the book as it details the efforts of the various state and Federal Police Agencies and Justice Departments (including the FBI playing catch-up after years of neglect by Hoover) to gain intelligence about the illegal operations of the mafia families and its mobsters with a view to putting the mafia families out of business (such as construction, transport, union racketeering, garbage disposal, fruit and meat markets, share trading and allowing legitimate business to flourish without criminal interference) and putting the mobsters away in jail for as long as possible.

The law enforcement agencies were helped in their task by favorable Federal Government legislation from the 1960's onward. Some important legislation was the 1968 Organized Crime Control Act which authorized the USA Attorney General to apply to Federal judges to obtain a warrant for electronic eavesdropping, the new law also enabled tapes and bugs to be admitted as evidence in courts of law. The RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Statute) proved to be an essential and very successful law to convict many criminals and mafia members.

The author states that Hoover was reluctant to move against the mob for many years not because he was scared of it but because of the powerful political contacts and protection the Mob had especially in the big cities like New York, Chicago, Buffalo etc, Hoover wanted to keep his job and was not game to upset certain powerful politicians and he worried his agents could be corrupted by too much exposure to the Mob and political pressure. By the 1980's the wheel had done a full turn as the FBI went all out to put the Mob out of business, it was helped greatly by the Reagan administration with extra funds and resources. The book reveals the efforts of many people who were determined to win this war such as Bobby Kennedy, G Robert Blakey (who drafted the RICO laws) and countless Federal and State detectives, policeman and attorneys.

Since 09/11 much of the FBI resources have been directed to the war on terror possibly at the expense of the war on the Mob which includes not only the Mafia but other well organised gangs, l wonder at times if the Mob is in a state of renewal and becoming stronger again; I hope not!

This book is written in a tex-book style which is so perfectly crafted with police like detail to thehistory of mob events. The only mis-representation for the book is the cover which almost led me to believe that this would have been written with a yellow journalism tinge to it, rather the book is crafted most perfectly and reads with absolute flow.

There are few people who can chronicle a topic in criminal justice with the scholarly erudition of Tom Reppetto. He combines his innate brilliance, his distinguished law enforcement career and his superb academic credentials in presenting a factual, detailed and accurate account of the government's efforts against the criminality of the American Mafia. The precision of his definition as well as his dedication to a factual accounting sets him apart from other authors writing about the "mafia" with their primary objective of appealing to the prurient entertainment interests of the unwary American reader. If you want to know [...] the American Mafia, Mr. Reppetto's works are a must read. Standing above and apart from the "spaccones", he is distinguished in his efforts.

So far, the book is captivating. Hard to put it down. I've read many other books in this genre and this one gives a general overview of both New York and Chicago Mafia empires. Really good!

I enjoyed Reppetto's previous book, American Mafia, which described the ascendancy of the American Mafia from the late 1800's to the mid-50's. After providing the rise of the Mob, now Reppetto gives us the fall.

This book starts with the Apalachin raid on a Mafia conference in upstate New York State, which caught the Mafia off guard, seemingly by a small town police department in 1957. It is here where Reppetto dates the start of the mob's downfall. Over the next five decades, increased focus on the Mafia from prosecutors and the FBI, new laws such as the RICO statutes, and Mafia incompetence decimated this once proud organization. One only needs to compare movies like the first Godfather movie from the early 70's and the Soprano's television series to see how the mafia declined in America's popular culture from a secret group of men of honor engaged in illegal business, to a cartoonish group of morally bankrupt thugs.

I actually liked this book better than American Mafia, as it was easier to follow and was a more coherent history, rather than a loosely held collection of stories which sometime distracted from Reppetto's previous work. It's no small feat to write a five decade history of an loosely affiliated organizations all over the United States, but Reppetto provides an effective history that never gets bogged down in detail or seems too fragmented. He also writes with dark humor, no doubt developed during his years in law enforcement that embellishes this work, and never seems inappropriate. Highly recommended for Mafia buffs out there.

Author Thomas Reppetto has provided us with another volume to complement his earlier work entitled American Mafia. The book begins with the 1957 Apalachin conclave in upstate New York which began the Mafia's downfall. The election of President John Kennedy and the appointment of his brother Robert as Attorney General to begin the 1960's turned into what the mob felt was a double cross as pressure was put on the mob and their dealings. When Lyndon Johnson took over for the assassinated Kennedy efforts were concentrated on civil rights and the Vietnam war rather than the mafia. However, through the following decades federal law enforcement, rather than state, has made it difficult for the mob to survive. The mob "superstars" if you will are all here, and old age, imprisonment, or death has removed them from the scene with no big names to replace them. The author warns the mob may be a shadow of its former self, but if we ignore its presence it may once again regain its past influence. There were times in the book I felt the author jumped back and forth on a particular subject, but it in no way detracted from my interest in the book. In addition I found there to be humorous anecdotes, if that's possible on this subject, in the book. Whether you've read his previous effort entitled American Mafia or not I'm sure you will enjoy Bringing Down the Mob. It is certainly worth your time.

Good book that shows how the well oiled machine that was the mob began to rust and decay as more and more made guys started to rat and take the easy way out.

In his _New Yorker_ essay "A Look at Organized Crime" from thirty years ago, Woody Allen had fun with gangster nicknames, including Thomas (The Butcher) Covello, Ciro (The Tailor) Santucci, Albert (The Logical Positivist) Corillo, Dominick (The Herpetologist) Mione, or Little Petey (Big Petey) Ross. I could not help thinking back on this silliness when reading _Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the American Mafia_ (Henry Holt) by Thomas Reppetto. There is nothing funny about Reppetto's chronicle of the decline and fall of organized crime (which is a sequel to his 2004 _American Mafia_ which described the mob's ascension), but here are Salvatore (Tom Mix) Santoro, Christopher (Christy Ticks) Furnari, Vincenzo (Chin) Gigante who was also nicknamed Aunt Julia, Carmine (The Snake) Persico, Antony (Tony Ducks) Corallo, or Murray (The Camel) Humphreys. Gang members may have acquired their names in childhood, or they might have been given in respect or derogation within the gang itself. The press had a field day with the names, sometimes providing its own, denominating Chin Gigante as "The Odd Father", as he tried to fake mental illness to avoid prosecution. Sure, the names are colorful, and many of these characters had more going for them than just being sociopaths or murderers. But this is a gritty story, even if it has the theme of the general success of law enforcement. It has plenty of throw-away lines that encapsulate horror, like "This time the government's chief witness had his head blown off in front of his wife." It is a coherent, wonderfully organized tour of an underworld most of us know just from the movies.

Anyone familiar with those movies, like _The Godfather_, _Goodfellas_, or _Casino_ is going to find much familiar here, and much at odds with the movie scripts. Reppetto says that anyone with his sort of knowledge of Mafia lore is asked if the movies reflect the reality of mob life. "The answer is no - and yes." Movies have to concentrate on action, so that murders and gun battles are far more concentrated on the screen, but are extraordinary events in real life. Investigators often learned to their surprise, "Mob life was dull. Most of the soldiers and their associates sat around eating, drinking, and playing cards, occasionally making the rounds of their various hangouts." The movies did convince the public that the Mafia existed; that the existence of the Mafia was ever an issue is surprising, but Reppetto shows that this was a legacy of J. Edgar Hoover, whose had a famous reluctance to admit the existence of a national crime syndicate. Once the FBI was finally in action, there was a real war with the Mafia, and it was generally a law enforcement victory, but this was also due to outdated Mafia culture. For instance, the mob should have easily controlled Las Vegas, but it sent out bosses who were badly chosen to be managers. The violence such bosses brought with them to Las Vegas was out of place where discretion and decorum were needed for advancement. Eventually the corporations took over, and the prospects for a mob paradise faded.

There have been eventual changes in the culture of the mob, mostly in response to societal changes. Respect for elders was not automatically rendered by young people as the twentieth century went on. The old-world traditions of ring-kissing and ceremonial bowing were regarded as silly by the sons of Mafia chieftains. Belonging to a secret men's organization became less fashionable, as it had for, say, the Masons. Young Americans started the century with sticking to one company, even one job, for a working lifetime, but it became the pattern to jump from one job to another if the second job had advantages. For the Mafia, this meant that the soldiers who used to have lifetime loyalties would skip to another job or another family if the money was better. The young guys also tended to use drugs, and some wound up as their own best customers. These factors meant that there was a constant turnover in leadership, and some put into leadership roles were simply not ready for them. It also meant that mob families were operating as simple street gangs rather than devoted criminal syndicates with some semblance of a code of honor. Make a list of any gangsters whose names you know, and look at how few of these names are operating now; the Mafia is getting by as an organization with a great past. Not all the decline is sociological; Reppetto devotes a chapter to the RICO statute, passed in 1970 but not put into action for a decade, which broadened the way the FBI could look at the patterns of organized crime. Reppetto knows that the Mafia is not completely defeated, and he has a scary vision of what international organized crime might become. His book, however, full of details and anecdotes, documents an impressive decline and fall.